Is it curtains for Central Park Theatre?

The Central Park: Historic movie palace in distress

A look at the historic Central Park Theatre, now a church on Chicago's West Side, which was recently closed after being cited for over 100 city building code violations. This 1917 building is said to be the first-ever air-conditioned movie theatre.

A look at the historic Central Park Theatre, now a church on Chicago's West Side, which was recently closed after being cited for over 100 city building code violations. This 1917 building is said to be the first-ever air-conditioned movie theatre.

John Owens, Chicago Tribune reporter

In a sea of empty lots in Chicago's North Lawndale neighborhood sits a faded relic that is one of the most historically significant American movie theaters still standing.

When it opened in 1917, the red-brick, three-story Central Park Theatre was hailed as a revolutionary entertainment venue — the first of the large "movie palaces" built by Balaban & Katz, and quite possibly the first movie theater in the world to feature air conditioning.

The Central Park, created by Chicago theater entrepreneurs A.J. Balaban, Barney Balaban and Sam Katz and Chicago architects C.W. and George L. Rapp, became the template for hundreds of movie palaces, from the Chicago and Uptown in Chicago to the Paramount in New York City.

"Before the Central Park, movie theaters were all like nickelodeons, uncomfortable boxes with folding chairs," said David Balaban, author of "The Chicago Movie Palaces of Balaban and Katz" and grandson of one of the five Balaban brothers who ran the B&K theater empire for decades. "The Central Park was different — it had the feeling of a European opera house. There wasn't an interest in how movie theaters looked until Balaban & Katz built the Central Park."

Today, however, the theater in the 3500 block of West Roosevelt Road is facing an uncertain future.

For 42 years, the 1,780-seat facility has been owned and operated by the Rev. Lincoln Scott's House of Prayer, Church of God in Christ, a Pentecostal congregation. Scott has used the building not only for services, but also as an adjunct facility for the almost 200 homeless men and women living at his shelter, Hope House, whose main facility is just west of the theater.

But Scott was forced to close the theater to his congregation of about 300 people in late February, after the city of Chicago cited the church with 105 building code violations. City officials say Scott faces a $36,000-per-day fine if he holds any events in the building before the violations are addressed.

"We were put out of the building, and I don't think that's justice to me, an old man who's served this community well," said Scott, 79.

Addressing the code violations would cost about $300,000, according to George Sherman, director of operations at the church's Hope House shelter.

"It's actually a blessing that the city came in and made us aware of some of these things," Sherman said. "So now we're making sure that we're getting our permits and trying to bring things up to city code. We want to make sure people are safe."

Some of the code violations became apparent as the church began to restore the building after it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.

Last year, a maintenance crew pulled down a drop ceiling that had covered the theater's balcony for decades. "There was six feet of standing water from a hole in the roof," said Fernando Gonzalez, maintenance chief for the church.

But financing building repairs and operating the homeless shelter have been daunting for Scott, who has paid for much of the work with church donations and from his own pocket.

To make matters worse, Scott and his church have been sued over the past few years by creditors alleging non-payment of credit-card and car-payment bills. Scott said he fell behind on payments for improvements to the theater and for a church minivan.

"I stumbled a couple of times, yes I did, but the bottom line is I kept the church open, the lights on and the gas on," said Scott, who estimated that his overall expenses for the church and shelter are around $22,000 per month.

"I've used money from every source to keep that building up, because it's my life's work," Scott added.

Lisa DiChiera, of the advocacy group Landmarks Illinois, which helped Scott apply for a $5,000 grant for a conditions assessment of the theater in 2005, noted the church's financial struggles.

"It's never really been clear what his funding support will be to make all these fixes," DiChiera said. "I feel bad for Rev. Scott because he's a one-man show."

The church is limited as a nonprofit in taking advantage of tax incentives. The theater, for instance, is in a tax-increment financing district, but only for-profits can use TIF funds, said Peter Strazzabosco, of the Chicago Department of Housing and Economic Development.

"I wish we could be more proactive (with helping the church), but we're limited in what we can offer," Strazzabosco said.

Scott said he's entertained the idea of selling the building, but there aren't people lining up to buy a huge 96-year-old theater in one of Chicago's poorest communities.

In March 2012, the neighborhood saw one of its other vintage buildings, the 99-year-old Shepherd's Temple (formerly the Anshe Kanesses Israel synagogue) on West Douglas Boulevard, torn down despite efforts from preservationists.

"Over time, people in our community have come to recognize the importance of these iconic structures in our neighborhood," said Charles Leeks, president of the North Lawndale Cultural and Historical Society. "It's like a death in the family, because these buildings can't be replaced."

Balaban family members, who were born and raised near Maxwell Street, had a deep respect for the Central Park Theatre because it was where the company introduced the "movie palace" concept later perfected throughout the country.

The concept included movies, live stage shows and first-class service, combined with flamboyant Rapp and Rapp architectural flourishes influenced by a mashup of European styles.

In the Central Park's case, experts see Italian Renaissance influences on the facade of the building and French Renaissance influences inside.

"It kind of looks like it was influenced by the Paris Opera House or Versailles," said Meg Kindelin, an architect with Chicago's Johnson-Lasky firm, which specializes in the restoration of older buildings.

The key feature in the theater's interior is the opera house-style mezzanine boxes, "intended to give the audience the feeling of being part of a stage set," according to A.J. Balaban in his 1942 memoir "Continuous Performance."

Another feature was air conditioning, which was produced by a novel carbon dioxide system that pushed cool air through vents in the theater's floor — vents that still exist in the Central Park. Barney Balaban is said to have come up with the idea, which came from his time working at a cold storage company in Chicago.

The theater first served North Lawndale's working-class Jewish and Eastern European community. "It was a ghetto then as it is now," said former North Lawndale resident and legendary swing clarinetist and orchestra leader Benny Goodman in a 1968 Tribune interview. "If it hadn't had been for the clarinet, I would have easily become a gangster."

Goodman made his professional debut on the Central Park's stage in 1921. And countless other acts performed there through the 1930s.

"You'd pay a small price to get into the theater, then you'd have a movie, a newsreel and a stage show," David Balaban said. "A very low labor rate allowed Balaban & Katz to give a high level of service for cheap."

By the 1930s, Balaban & Katz had been taken over by Paramount Pictures (where Barney Balaban was president from 1936 to 1964). And by the late 1950s, North Lawndale's Jewish and Eastern European residents had moved out and were replaced by African-Americans.

By the 1960s, the neighborhood had been decimated by foreclosures and riots, culminating in the 1968 riots after the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination.

The theater showed movies through 1970, before James Ward, who bought the building from Balaban & Katz successor ABC Great States, closed it.

Scott, who had opened a church a block from the Central Park Theatre in 1966, was encouraged by a member of his congregation to buy the building in 1971. He had to chase out gang members who had taken over the abandoned structure, but once he did, Scott worked with the community to renovate the building.

Despite the church's lack of money, observers credit Scott with being a conscientious guardian of this historic structure.

"He's made a dollar go a long way, but at some point all the deferred maintenance can snowball," said Dave Syfczak, a Chicago police officer who serves as caretaker for the shuttered Uptown Theatre and as a board member of the Theatre Historical Society of America.

"I'm sure you could throw $10 million at the building and not address everything that it needs to get it back into its pristine condition," Syfczak added.

Community representatives say their first hope is that Scott can raise the money to address the violations and reopen the building. They say they hope the theatre survives as a cultural touchstone for North Lawndale — if not as a house of worship, then as something else, like an arts and performance venue.

That isn't an easy option. DiChiera cited another old gem, the former New Regal Theatre, now called the Avalon, at 79th Street and Stony Island Avenue.

"You've got the Avalon Theatre on the South Side, which is in much better shape than the Central Park and that's been empty for years and is still having trouble finding an occupant," DiChiera said.

But Leeks said the Central Park Theatre is too valuable to lose.

"We see the Central Park and other historic buildings as anchors that we can rebuild the community around," Leeks said.

Take a video tour of the Central Park Theatre online at www.chicagotribune.com/centralpark.